A FLORIDA SKETCH-BOOK. 



IN THE FLAT-WOODS. 



IN approaching Jacksonville by rail, the 

 traveler rides hour after hour through seem- 

 ingly endless pine barrens, otherwise known 

 as low pine-woods and flat-woods, till he 

 wearies of the sight. It would be hard, he 

 thinks, to imagine a region more unwhole- 

 some looking and uninteresting, more pov- 

 erty-stricken and God-forsaken, in its entire 

 aspect. Surely, men who would risk life in 

 behalf of such a country deserved to win 

 their cause. 



Monotonous as the flat-woods were, how- 

 ever, and malarious as they looked, arid 

 wastes and stretches of stagnant water flying 

 past the car window in perpetual alternation, 

 I was impatient to get into them. They 

 were a world the like of which I had 

 never seen ; and wherever I went in eastern 

 Florida, I made it one of my earliest concerns 

 to seek them out. 



